Remembrance as Regeneration

The Grand in Blackpool marks the centenary of the First World War by hosting the final dates of a world tour of Pat Barker’s Booker-nominated novel Regeneration from Tuesday to Saturday.

This critically acclaimed dramatisation plays to only 11 venues throughout the UK, closing this debut tour at Blackpool.

Set in Craiglockhart War Hospital in Scotland in 1917, the play features war poet and soldier Siegfried Sassoon who has been institutionalised in an attempt to undermine his public disapproval of the war.

Army psychiatrist Dr William Rivers has been tasked with returning shell-shocked officers to the trenches, yet under Sassoon’s influence, has become tormented by the morality of what is done in the name of medicine.

Regeneration is a compassionate look at war and its effects starring Stephen Boxer, above (Doctors, Foyle’s War), as Dr Rivers and Tim Delap (Midsomer Murders, Silent Witness) as Sassoon.